Woman of Three Legacies
by Mr Khan
Summary: If you want Metroid or Chozo DNA, there's only one place left to go in the galaxy: Samus Aran. What does it mean when all you're good for is being a source for bio-weapons? Post Fusion, Gen/Angst
1. The Incident

Woman of Three Legacies

By Mr Khan

1: The Incident

_So the Hatchling passed from our care, returning to her own kind; standard-bearer of an empty nest twice over, as her guardians turned to face the Worm that inevitably consumed us all._

Hypersleep was supposed to be deep and dreamless; a still, placid existence as devoid of all purpose as anything this side of Death. It was meant to fill the time spent in deep space travel by pilots of one-man spacecraft, who would otherwise have nothing to do as they watched the swirl of Subspace fleet by. Thus hypersleep was not meant for Her, for although Her ship was small and economical, it was also fairly well-equipped, and could take on passengers perfectly well and provide her with entertainments or exercises to pass the time. She opted for hypersleep as her drug of choice, the only way to live a properly efficient existence and not waste the requisite hours and days of space travel just _thinking_. The kind of thoughts she had were nonproductive, and could only serve to dull her edge or distract her from her work.

But even hypersleep seemed to fail her.

~0~

_Suddenly her vision is filled by one vicious, monstrous mandible, fastening to her and beginning to feed. Nothing came out, nothing she could perceive, but the parasite drew her inexorably to her death. She was dying, or was she growing stronger? Was she the one feeding on the victim, drawing life-force into herself? The woman collapsed, dead, the parasite detached, and began to scream._

~0~

The screaming didn't stop. The hypersleep system had kicked off, and she awoke to the all-too-familiar sound of the Baby's Cry distress beacon. High priority; immediate assistance, she knew what that beacon meant, but she needed context. She sighed and stirred, motor functions restored as she awoke.

"Where's the distress beacon coming from?"

"Local coordinates, about 3/4ths of a light year from here, Samus." The reply came from her new, disembodied companion; the preserved intelligence of Adam Malkovich.

Adam had taken refuge aboard her ship since he had defied military orders back at the BSL station and ultimately aided her in its destruction. It was surprisingly less awkward than she had initially assumed, having Adam be omnipresent aboard her ship, since he was no longer human. For all intents and purposes, he was just another shipboard AI, albeit one with most of Adam's memories and all of his personality quirks. He didn't speak until spoken to, and though he, as part of her computer, could see her at all times, it bothered her no more than if it were merely a computer watching her. Mostly things remained unchanged, except that she now had a highly decorated military veteran living with her, a second opinion that could provide analyses that few other AI's could hope to achieve, and someone whom she could trust to give the best answer in almost any situation.

"3/4ths of a light year…" she mused, fully sitting up in her hypersleep chair, which snapped into place behind her. It took her a moment or two to remember which sector she had drifted into lately, to what might even be in this vicinity. She swiped her hand in front of a display, prompting a holographic starmap to appear before her vision. There wasn't much out here at all, and the distress beacon was coming from a small nebula that was too dense for usual subspace travel.

The random distress beacon meant many things to Samus; a mystery, an adventure, a harrowing brush with death, a chance to discover more about herself. It was something that could likely be a dangerous trap, a meal ticket, or might end up being both. She adjusted course, heading away from the doldrums and towards a new adventure.

Life as a bounty hunter had always been irregular for Samus, compared to her time in the military, but the months since the incident at the BSL Station had been especially slow-paced. She had gotten paid for that, even though it had not been an assigned mission. She had been paid quite discretely, in a manner which she had inferred and which Adam had positively identified as "hush money," a lump of cash from the Galactic Federation to make sure that she did not breathe a word of the fact that they had once again been illegally cloning Metroids, and had almost unleashed a plague of X Parasites upon the galaxy. That one payment, however, had been the last instance of contact she had had with the military higher-ups. She had not been declared an outlaw, but clearly the military had had it with her free-spiritedness.

She had known this was a possibility ever since she had decided to become a bounty hunter, but it was still deathly boring when the military finally decided that she was more of a liability than her services were worth; they had always given her the life-altering assignments: the two to Zebes, the rescue mission to Aether, the mission to the Alimbic Cluster. In the early years, while the Space Pirates were still active, they always had a constant stream of sabotage missions up for Bounty. Now, however, that well had run dry, and even basic odd jobs were few and far between. Fighting against galactic evil was all she had ever known, and her enduring boredom sometimes led her to ask certain existential questions, more of those resolve-weakening questions she hated so, and the reason she now turned more insistently to hypersleep for solace.

Thus, in her own way, she was grateful for the fact that someone was in distress. She was inclined to feel guilty about that fact, but that was another feeling that would not help her, and she refocused her efforts on the task at hand. Her ship decelerated to normal space as she reached the bounds of the nebula. "Switch to beta-ray scanner," she said. Adam or her ship (it was hard to designate one compared to the other at this point) complied, and the persistent teal mist of the nebula disappeared in favor of a black void with a few solid objects outlined in a green wire-frame.

One object in particular dominated the view. It was large and awkwardly shaped, smooth and rounded on the bottom, but the top was highly irregular, dominated by many different structures as though the whole thing were a huge, spacefaring city. As her ship cruised closer, Samus studied it carefully. She was just about to give voice to the obvious question when it was answered for her. "This vessel matches no registered design in current use by any entity known to the Galactic Federation," Adam said. She had assumed that was the case. If this was an actual spacecraft, it was horrendously designed for actual space travel, and even space stations were generally more symmetrical.

She hit another key, and the ship ran a search for suitable landing sites, then she stood and activated her Varia Suit. A beep indicated that a site had been located, and her gunship moved in to land on a landing platform that jutted out of the side of one of the many towers that protruded from the "city's" surface.

Her ship landed, and she moved over to the lift. "I'll relay some pictures and scans of what I can find inside," she said to Adam. She said no more because she did not need to, and her computer did not reply for similar reasons; both knew that their first goal here was to try to determine this mysterious craft's origin. The vexing matter was the fact that this ship of completely unknown design was using a galactic standard distress signal. The obvious solution was that someone else had happened upon this ship and had run into something dangerous. The more sinister possibility was that this was all a trap, but Samus was not the feared and respected heroine of the galaxy for nothing, and this was exactly the sort of thing she was good for. Perhaps the only thing she was good for, but again she shunted that thought out of her head as she descended to the landing platform below.

She stepped across the landing platform, safely protected from the vacuum of space by her familiar red-and-yellow Varia Suit, something she had retrieved from an old Chozo outpost after her old suit had been damaged in the incident on the BSL Station. With a bit of effort she had also found a few basic suit upgrades in the vicinity of the Chozo outpost; Screw Attack, Plasma Beam, Ice Beam, Super Missile, and Power Bomb, guaranteeing that she would be prepared for most possible scenarios, barring another major mission.

A quick glance at the door leading into the tower verified that it too operated according to the galactic standard for militarized zones; a basic shield on the door that reacted to ray stimulation. A quick shot from her arm cannon and she gained access to a small room that she quickly identified as a pressurizing chamber. As she heard the familiar hissing sound of artificial atmospheric gases filling the room, Samus keyed her scanner to assess the atmosphere's breathability. It came back negative, but in an odd way. It definitely wasn't breathable, but the suit's systems could not determine what side-effects this mixture would have if she breathed it in. Not that it really mattered, as she wasn't planning on taking her helmet off.

Once the pressurization finished, she proceeded into the next room, making her way into a straight hallway. It was made of metal and what she guessed was some sort of composite plastic, and Samus cast her gaze over every inch she could see, both to satisfy her curiosity to explore and to send bits and parts of the elaborate etchings in the metal mould around the ceiling back to Adam to identify. The artistry of it was subtle, but touching in its own way, though it did not appear to depict anything coherent, it signified a species less utilitarian than most, though again that should have been apparent from the egregiously impractical design of the entire vessel.

After negotiating her way through a few of these well-adorned but otherwise nondescript hallways, she found herself facing a deep shaft. Samus surmised it was an elevator, but it was down below, and she could derive no controls for it. More intriguing was the view on the far side of the shaft, which was some sort of clear plastic, through which she could see a large dome-like structure; the point from which her suit told her the distress signal was emanating. Encouraged by the sight of her apparent goal, she Screw-jumped down the shaft, some 40 meters deep.

Down at the bottom she stepped through another door, into another nondescript room, a small waypoint room with four doors leading in four directions. She moved slowly through the room, fairly certain she wanted to go straight ahead, but…

Samus stopped suddenly as the HUD in her visor flickered, then dissolved into static. Her alarm increased when she found she was also paralyzed, the joints of her suit refusing to function.

_A suit failure. But I'm not under emotional duress,_ she thought, recalling her near-disastrous encounter with the Ridley clone on the Bottle Ship. She thought frantically, now certain that she had indeed been drawn into a trap, when she gathered a new memory; a small spherical robot she had encountered on Aether. That enemy had been able to force a soft reset of her suit's software, but this seemed more pervasive. If she wanted to move, she would have to deactivate her suit, exposing herself to the unknown quantity of the atmosphere here.

She deliberated about that decision, but soon whatever was affecting her made it for her. Her suit began to dematerialize from the arms outward, and she hastily took one last breath of oxygen, for whatever it would be worth. Her suit finished fading away and Samus stood, exposed and vulnerable to the elements in her skin-fitting blue biosuit. She glanced around frantically, knowing she had minutes at most to reclaim control of her suit before death claimed her.

Again, whatever sinister force was at work here resolved her dilemma by emitting a small electric shock through the atmosphere, just enough to force her stubborn lung muscles to work, sucking in the non-viable air. Samus learned the effects of the gas mixture very quickly, or would have, had she been able to retain her consciousness. She collapsed to the cold metal floor, her limbs and blonde ponytail splayed in a prone position.

~0~

"Samus, Samus?" She awoke slowly to Adam's voice, her slowly-awakening mind expecting to see him leaning over her, before she remembered that he was now merely her computer. Once that fact clicked back into place, awareness of many things rushed back simultaneously; she was alive, she was back in her Varia Suit, Adam was present, which meant she was on her ship, and this led her to a whole host of questions.

"How did I get back here?" she asked.

"You were suddenly teleported just outside of the ship in your suit," Adam replied. "I repositioned so that the ship's lift was able to retrieve you."

"What happened to me?"

"The ship's medical scanners showed no detriments to your health, except…"

The "except" showed that it was indeed a human intelligence powering her shipboard computer. No normal AI would show that degree of concern for its patient's sensitivities, but Samus had never been one to enjoy having information withheld from her.

"Except…?"

"Two of your eggs were taken."

_Author's Note: "Random bad incident," is the standard plot for so many Metroid games and fics, I know, though obviously it's necessary exposition. The reason this contains only that much exposition is that I'm too ADD-rattled to do more than one chapter consecutively. I am going in what I hope is an interesting direction with this, so bear with me. It's also my first Metroid fic ever (previous efforts being in One Piece and SWAT Kats, with one-shots scattered elsewhere), so reviews will be appreciated on my general approach._


	2. A Warrior's Worth

Chapter 2: A Warrior's Worth

_The hatchling embodied salvation and destruction both, having to save some by annihilating others. Conflict was at the core of her being, but she faced that duty with open eyes._

"_Two of your eggs were taken." _That statement had continued to haunt Samus for months, a gnawing doubt that had grown over time.

At first, it hadn't been an especially big deal. The theft of one egg out of each of her ovaries had merely been another part of the mystery woven by that mysterious incident on that equally mysterious ship. She had been trapped without her suit in an un-breathable atmosphere that turned out to be a perfect anesthetic, knocking her out, then, despite her complete helplessness, she was returned to her ship with two replaceable reproductive parts of her body missing. The only other trace had been a small incision near her pelvis that had been almost completely healed even by the time that she had returned to her ship. The oddly-shaped city-ship itself had bucked and heaved wildly soon after Adam got her aboard her gunship, casting the gunship into the nebula before the mystery ship disappeared. She hadn't given the theft much thought in particular, though it was reasonable to assume that those eggs had been her captor's goal, given that that was the only thing that had been taken from her before fleeing. It was a mystery, certainly, but nothing that seriously undermined her more so than any mystery she had ever pondered.

As the months passed and the mystery remained unresolved, however, she began to re-imagine what had happened to her. Something, some unknown and likely alien force had gotten inside her, taken something from her without her consent. Something that was deeply, personally, and intimately hers, her eggs, the element with which she could one day make children. Her future, her legacy. Although they were just two eggs, two of many, they were still an intimate part of her, and they had been taken without her consent.

She imagined that what she felt must be similar to how some women felt after being raped; to be made helpless and have something taken from her. Rape was entirely out of Samus' field of first-hand experience, despite the fact that she had been a woman in a branch of the military where women rarely went. She had never gotten the slightest hint of such intent from the men she had served with, and she imagined that had had something to do with the fact that they all knew her reputation as a practically superhuman combatant. Many other people knew her merely as a person in an Armor suit, and probably assumed she was a male to begin with.

She was being a little irrational to think of it as rape, but that was where her mind had headed, as the months continued to separate her from the incident itself, she found it only grew on her mind and didn't diminish in importance, as was normal for traumatic experiences.

She had, quite fortunately, finally found work to keep her mind off of that mystery, as well as the general boredom that had consumed her post-BSL Station life. A clan of Ulgosian bandits that were wanted by the Federation's law enforcement branch had made their base of operations in an as-yet-unoccupied region of Aether. The Luminoth were still trying to bring their population back up, and while they still had many weapons left over from their war with the Ing, their population was still not quite up to speed for even this relatively small Ulgosian clan. Equally, it was a job Samus could get paid twice for: once by the Luminoth and once by the Galactic Police (who were still willing to work with her, unlike the Federation Military).

The job was a simple one: infiltrate the camp that the bandits had set up and tear through their defenses, then the Luminoth could swoop in and use their superior technology to capture any bandits that survived Samus' initial assault. The Luminoth would help her turn in the rest of the bandits to the Federation, a group with whom the Luminoth were not yet officially affiliated.

There was another motive for her going to Aether. The Luminoth might have a lead on the design of the ship that Samus had been lured to. Adam had been spending all his processing power in the past few months on scanning all the databases that he had legal (or less-than-legal) access to, running all the design data that the ship and Samus' sensors had obtained against all kinds of digital knowledge stored by the Galactic Federation and its affiliates. Needless to say, Adam's efforts had proven fruitless.

The Luminoth, however, were a far older race by space-faring standards than most Federation members (certainly older than Humans), a race that had once roamed the stars alongside the Chozo in ancient times. Perhaps their archives would have a lead, something, anything vaguely resembling the architecture that she had seen, which could then yield the identity of the person or persons that had stolen from her body.

That guess proved to be true. Samus received the call when she was still scouting around the perimeter of the bandits' base, supplementing the data on the base that the Luminoth had given her. The base was on a part of Aether far removed from the region of the Four Temples, the part of Aether she was familiar with. It was a tropical area, more humid than Torvus Bog, that supported huge trees averaging 0.75 kilometers in diameter that reached many kilometers up into the sky. The bandits had bored and excavated their way through the root structure at the base of one tree in particular, and Samus had, as best as she could, been making her way through the prohibitively dense undergrowth towards that tree.

Samus had mentally sketched out her plan of attack. The bandits' perimeter was established by a series of guard towers equipped with high-frequency sonic cannons, then had the ground between the guard towers mined, the latter point being something Samus was able to identify with her Thermal visor. The simplest thing in this case was to scale the guard tower, then Screw Jump her way from there over the mined area. Samus slid out from behind the large fern that she was using for concealment, steadied her arm cannon and prepared to launch her attack when the call came.

She darted back behind the fern and answered the transmission. "Yes, Adam?"

"Samus, we found it." Those words alone were enough to draw Samus away from her mission, at least for the moment. Her ship was only a few kilometers away, and she made the trip quickly, wanting to make sure she was secure while she received the information. It was a sign that the incident was weighing too heavily on her mind, if news regarding that was enough to throw her from her mission, even if it were a simple task like this one. Shirking her duty was almost unthinkable, but she excused it because it was not an urgent mission given that the Ulgosians, aside from trespassing, posed no threat to the Luminoth.

She returned to the ship, eagerly focused on the identity of the one who had violated her. "Report," she said shortly.

"The Luminoth have been assisting me in analyzing the data we got back from the mystery ship, and we retrieved matching design schematics from one species the Luminoth had contact with a long time ago: the N'Kren."

That gave Samus pause. The N'Kren had been one of the ancient, enlightened races known in galactic legend as the Star Children. The others were the Luminoth, the Ylla, the Bryyonians, and of course the Chozo. Each race of Star Children had been vastly respected in their time, though their heyday had preceded the time of the Galactic Federation, or the time when humans had developed deep space travel. These races had fostered galactic understanding and paved the way for the rise of the Federation, but they were mostly gone now. The Luminoth were the main survivors as they were finally on their way back to recovery, but they had nearly been wiped out in their disastrous, interdimensional war with the Ing. The Ylla had vanished overnight in a mysterious cosmic incident, due to what was believed to be some sort of stellar phenomena. The Bryyonians had fallen to civil war. The Chozo had either ascended to a higher, spiritual plane of existence or died from Phazon poisoning.

The N'Kren, like the other Star Children, had met a tragic fate. The N'Kren were a quasi-telepathic race, not able to read thoughts, but able to absorb ideas and soak in knowledge from life-forms all around them like mental sponges. This had cemented the N'Kren's place in the galactic pantheon, as they built upon the knowledge of the other highly-advanced races, as well as adding ideas they received from lesser species. They had been known for being intimately familiar with nature (and thus with biology), and had also been marked for their diplomatic efforts, as they were ideal for communicating with unknown species, or with mediating misunderstandings caused by cultural blind spots.

Their downfall had come from the rise of the lesser species, of humans and Space Pirates and others to prominence on the galactic stage. The N'Kren, it turned out, were rather sensitive to the beliefs and sensitivities of other species in that they picked up the detrimental ideas as well as the beneficial ones. With small amounts of contact, relatively brief visits to alien worlds, the N'Kren were able to minimize the impact of the negative ideas. The other Star Children were advanced enough that sustained contact with them was not detrimental to the N'Kren.

When many lesser species began to advance on galactic culture all at once, however, the culture shock was too sudden. The N'Kren could not contain the bad ideas that came in from all quarters, and their personalities were irrevocably corrupted. The collapse of the N'Kren was swift, and in many cases violent, as some of them banded together to launch attacks on other species, or attacks on other N'Kren. Whether at their own hands or the hands of others, the N'Kren were mostly extinct within a few cycles. Others of the species had fallen not to the temptations of violence, but to the temptations of greed or sloth, and had retreated into lives of seclusion or self-indulgence, disappearing from galactic knowledge as they wasted away in their own avarice.

Samus wondered if someone was out there who was for the N'Kren what she was for the Chozo: the last inheritor of the species' heritage. But why then would they target her; if they wanted to target items relating to the Chozo? There were still a few far-flung outposts, and Tallon IV was still mostly undamaged now that the Phazon and Space Pirates were gone, artifacts were there aplenty for those who knew where to look.

"So the city-ship we found…" Samus began inquisitively.

"It was a custom-made N'Kren city-ship, dating back to roughly 4,000 Pre-Federation Date. It was retrofitted with a few galactic standard components, however."

"Right," Samus said. "With the Baby's Cry distress beacon and the normal doors. Is there anything else?"

"Something very significant," Adam said. "I felt it important enough to summon you back."

Samus raised an eyebrow, but understood. Again Adam reminded her of who he was, that he knew how to phrase a statement as simple as "we found it" in such a way as to manipulate her actions. "What?" she said.

"Once I found out about the N'Kren in the Luminoth's database, I immediately ran a broad-based search of that term through every communications channel I have access to, and uncovered a communiqué within the Federation CIROs."

CIROs. The Federation organization that had caused the most tragedies for Samus in recent years: the Clandestine Initiative Research Organization. CIROs was the shorthand for the actual personnel of the organization, the kind of black-ops people that managed such highly-illegal operations as Bottle Ship, or the Metroid Cloning operations on the BSL Station. CIROs were on the way to try to capture the SA-X when she resolved to destroy the Station. When it came to tactics and weapons research, CIROs were as bad as the Space Pirates, though they were far more cautious in their work, and thus were unknown to most civilians. Adam was definitely taking advantage of his intimate knowledge of Federation inner-workings to be able to monitor a CIRO comms channel.

_Nobody except historians even discuss the N'Kren anymore, so to have the CIROs discussing them had to be of some significance,_ Samus thought.

"Here is the communiqué," Adam said, calling it up on a viewscreen.

**83.4.22-3: 33-2, 33-3, and 34-8 are hereby notified of their mission. Rendezvous with the N'Kren at Point Theta in 19 standard rotations. Be advised, ABs and ICs will attend for competitive financial endeavor. **

"What does this mean?" Samus asked. It was obviously in code, and though she had some ideas about what some of it could mean, but these were codes of a branch of the military she had never been exposed to.

"I had some contact with CIRO data when I was aboard the BSL," Adam replied. "From the contact info I received at the time, the beginning numbers are merely the call number for this communiqué based on the date of its transmission. The first three numbers designate certain agents. Point Theta is one of their designated rendezvous points. It's these "ABs" and "ICs" that I cannot comprehend. The final line sounds like an auction," he added.

The undertones of paranoia that had been lurking in Samus' mind since the mystery incident grew in strength at that moment, as her mind clicked together a few possibilities: an N'Kren ship and the theft of two bundles of reproductive cells, an N'Kren rendezvous, numerous shady bidders in an auction. Without hesitation, she asked the next question. "What was the actual date on that transmission?"

"Five standard rotations ago," Adam replied.

~~~00000~~~

The chamber was dark and silent. Only fifteen beings occupied it, though it was built to accommodate many more. The fifteen could only see each other, and little else, the rest of the room shrouded in shadow.

"Always with the theatrics," commented one life form, a human concealed in a black combat suit trimmed with silver.

"Cut the chatter," another similarly-clad human replied.

To their right, the three humans heard low-pitched, animalistic snarls. Further over to the right, a number of smoother clicking and whistling sounds could be heard. The other delegations were restless as well.

In any other situation, Federation CIROs, or indeed any Federation personnel, would have shot the other delegates on sight, but here all were allowed an equal playing field. Three well-armored CIROs joined seven Space Pirates and one Kriken Warrior with four Kriken Slaves.

The Space Pirates were still a presence in the galactic underworld, seeking to restore their previous glory that had been shattered with the destruction of Zebes and the occupation of their homeworld during the Phazon War. Without Mother Brain's know-how and with their main population now under Federation oversight, they only remained in a scattering of bases in the far reaches of the galaxy, and the remnants of the Junta that controlled still sought feverishly to rebuild their lost glory. They still commanded vast financial resources, and thus could afford to come to the table here.

The Kriken, of course, were always seeking different ways to conquer. Conquest was the only basis for their culture, and their direct conquests afforded them large amounts of hard currency that they dedicated to nothing other than more conquest. The insectoid species was surprisingly individualistic and decentralized, giving individual Kriken Warriors a mandate for conquest while allotting lesser members of their race as slaves to the successful conquerors. One Kriken Conqueror in particular had learned of this rendezvous, and consistently attended them.

The tension broke finally as another light and door appeared, heralding the arrival of their host. Only the jaded delegates identified the arrival as their host, given that what they saw were three fairly unassuming quadrupedal combat drones; unassuming, but of a make still distinct from any other in use, and known to be stronger than they appeared. The drone in the middle was controlled by their host, taking on his voice and moving according to his command.

Their host was nothing if not cautious. He occasionally met various delegates at what the Federation CIROs had designated as Point Theta, a rendezvous point near a pulsar whose energy disrupted all spatial radio signals. All delegates had to check their weapons at the entrance to his peculiarly shaped spacecraft, and the interior was well-patrolled by various custom-made combat drones, all particularly well-armed. Their host trusted nothing but the cash money that could be offered by the delegates.

For their host was a peddler, an arms merchant who exclusively designed his own bioweapons, then sold them off to the highest bidder. His ideas had provided some critical groundwork for the bioweapons developed by all the major galactic powers. His prices were high, but his products had the potential to more than pay for themselves, though often their potential went underutilized. His works were highly illegal and dangerous, and if the Federation bought them, they often did not see the light of day. If others obtained these weapons, the Federation made it a priority to make sure that they could not use them, so the actual influence of his works was more limited than they deserved to be, but as he got paid either way, he did not seem to care.

_It is a pleasure to see you again,_ the human delegates suddenly heard. Another peculiar trick of their host's that they had never resolved was his universal translation technology that seemed to operate on different standards than most translation tech. _I trust you are all eager to sample my wares._

_Damn straight,_ thought one of the CIROs, though he knew better than to say it.

_This evening I have something special for you. Not one, but two extinct species that I have managed to partially restore. Gentlemen of the Galactic Federation, the Space Pirates, and the Kriken Empire, what would you say if I told you I could give you Metroids?_

Silence met his declaration, though the delegates all thought similar incredulous thoughts. _Now, their host added, what would you say if I could offer you a living Chozo, making it yours to command?_

Now there was an audible hissing from the Kriken delegate, in what, despite the vast biological differences, was identifiable as a noise of derision.

_You are right to scoff,_ the host said. _For these races are extinct, but their legacy lives on; there is one being in the universe that bears the DNA of the ultimate parasitic predator species, and the second-most enlightened species ever to travel the stars._

Another set of lights turned on, this time revealing two large clear glass enclosures on the other side of the room. Within the containers there were two humans; female, seeming to be between 25 and 30 cycles old. Upon first glance, the two females appeared to be identical in phenotype, of the same height and build with blonde hair done up in ponytails. The only immediately visible difference in their appearance was their clothing: the female in the right tank had a skin-tight solid red jumpsuit, while the jumpsuit worn by the one in the left tank was white.

The two females were engaged in very different activities. Red-suit was engaged with a chin-up bar, pulling her toned body up and down effortlessly. White-suit, however, was working at a holographic block-puzzle; a standard pastime for intellectuals across the galaxy, and thus known for their difficulty, though there seemed to be little hesitation in white-suit's movements as she negotiated her way through the puzzle.

_Observe,_ their host said. _For I have for sale two females who look like humans, but are actually another species. One has trace amounts of Metroid DNA in her genome, while the other has significant Chozo components. They are contained in docility fields currently,_ the host added, _because I have not had time to do mental reprogramming. Just a pair of clones brought to maturity with about as much education loaded into them as a graduate of the Federation Military Academy. The tanks keep them focused and obedient_.

_Both women match the human genome about 99.5%, however the final elements of their genetic code vary. The woman on your right has .5% Metroid DNA, while the woman to your left has .5% Chozo DNA. The Metroid and Chozo genetic material in either case was insufficient for me to be able to bring about full-scale Metroid or Chozo clones, but in each case I have created much-enhanced humans._

_The Metroid clone has vastly enhanced durability. Like the species whose genes she bears, the most effective way to hurt her is with ice-based weaponry as she can take tremendous amounts of damage from about anything else and survive, she has incredible levels of stamina, and indeed has retained the Metroids' most compelling ability, though she needs to get her enlarged canine teeth below the dermal layer of a life-form to enact it. She is natively much more aggressive than most humans, though that is not currently visible because of the docility field._

_The Chozo clone, of course, retains enhanced intelligence, though further tests are needed before I can verify the true depths of her intellect, which should be all the advertising she needs in that regard. She seems to have some low-level telekinetic abilities, though again I have a hard time of verifying. The docility field impacts her mental abilities, and she is devilishly clever when the field is turned off. Her enhancements also manifest themselves in the form of enhanced dexterity. She has a near-instantaneous reaction time and can, with her limbs unaided, perform complex maneuvers that no human would be capable of. _

Again there was a derisive hiss from the Kriken.

_Mock if you must,_ said the host, showing a hint of anger. _But listen for a moment more._ _There are only two clones at the moment, but I am not selling them. The top bidder here will receive access to the custom genomes I have created here, as well as the pure genetic stock of one other. You may think these are insignificant genetic modifications, yet with even smaller traces of Metroid and Chozo DNA, as well as the proper equipment, one woman has made herself alone into a destructive force to be reckoned with in the galaxy. There is a brand-name behind my merchandise this time stronger than my own. Gentlemen of the Galactic Federation, Space Pirates, and Kriken Empire; I give you the chance to bid on Samus Aran._

The shock that ran through the room was supplemented by an alarm that began blaring almost as if in response to that bold declaration. All the lights in the room turned off, except for the ones highlighting the two clones in the tanks, who were oblivious to the sudden chaos and continued their mundane activities.

All the delegates understood the emergency procedures as part of the tacit agreements that had brought them there in the first place. The drone that their host had been directly controlling suddenly changed its posture; just another high-powered combat drone. Small doors opened at the rear of the room, behind the tanks, but the delegates were loath to flee. All of the delegates were very savvy individuals that prided themselves on being well-informed, and if someone had managed to actually infiltrate one of their meetings, they had to know who it was. The Federation CIROs stood warily near one of the tanks, assuming a loose combat formation. The Kriken Slaves surrounded their commanding Warrior as they edged towards another door, while the Space Pirates also assumed a formation surrounding the one that seemed to be in charge.

They did not have to wait long to learn of the intruder. The main door into the chamber had sealed itself shut, a huge, heavy door composed partly of Bendezium. After the door locked shut, the only thing that could be heard in the chamber was the continued blaring of the intruder alarm, until a loud, sustained explosion was heard, muffled somewhat by the huge door, the telltale sound of a Power Bomb. The door shook and began to smoke as parts of it flaked off, clinking on the metal floor. A second explosion followed, shorter and louder than the first, and the door finally fell in.

She entered in the wake of her own destruction, a streak of vermilion and gold, the clanking footfalls of metal upon metal somehow sounding graceful at the rate at which she ran. "Damn," one of the CIROs uttered, his exclamation halfway between annoyance and awe. For as dangerous as she was, as untrustworthy as she had become to the Federation hierarchy, watching Samus Aran in combat was still a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The Space Pirates panicked and fled into one of the escape passages, while the Kriken Warrior stood only a moment longer before retreating along with its slaves. The CIROs hesitated longer still, constrained by a professional need to assess Samus' abilities for as long as was safely possible, as well as a general awe of her lethal acrobatics as she leapt deftly through and between a number of the host's high-powered combat drones, burning through some with Plasma while destroying others with Super Missiles. Samus had noted their presence, of course, the CIROs were certain of it, but that was unavoidable. The fact that she had somehow ambushed this rendezvous at all, secret beyond secret, was baffling, especially given that they knew she had lost all contact with the Federation Military. They waited until Samus turned her back on them, leaping atop a taller combat drone that was moving in on her, that the CIROs too finally retreated.

~~~000~~~

Samus leapt atop the tall combat drone, getting inside its range before it could bring its powerful arm-mounted cannons to bear. Once atop its head, she seized it in a firm grip before firing a charged blast from her arm cannon. The slimmer metal plating at the very top of its head gave way, exposing complex circuitry that was flash-fried by her beam of choice. She leapt off the drone, causing its now-directionless form to collapse, landing on a handful of smaller drones and crushing them. Another Super Missile leveled at one drone that had managed to avoid the collapse of its larger comrade, and the room was clear.

Some further network hacking by Adam, utilizing some of the CIRO password algorithms he had obtained had yielded the location of Point Theta to her. It was ingenious to have a rendezvous point out so close to the pulsar, obscuring all low-frequency electromagnetic signals, rendering sensors and radio communications impassable. If anyone wasn't certain that the rendezvous was occurring in the pulsar's obstruction field, then there was no way to discern that something was occurring there.

That sword cut both ways, however, and while the only way to find the ship in the field after her gunship arrived had been to run visible-light cameras and carefully scan back and forth, once she had begun to fly towards the ship in the field, there had been no way for them to detect her approach either. Only once her ship had penetrated the docking bay had the alarms gone off, and by then she was on the attack, bringing all her years of combat skill to bear.

Turrets, drones, and locked doors all sought to deter her advance, but she had surpassed them all, determined to find the one that had stolen from her. She had become so obsessed as to ignore due process, to ignore the fact that an offhand mention of an N'Kren in a CIRO communiqué was not enough to mean that it was an N'Kren that had stolen her eggs, or even that it was this particular N'Kren that was guilty. She refused to have a part of her sold off, to be used by the Federation, or by anyone else, ever again, and that obsession drove her. Her suspicions had been confirmed somewhat when she had found patterns in the metal in this smaller ship similar to the N'Kren city-ship.

Once the room was cleared, she turned her attention to the two tanks and saw them. Two women, who looked exactly like her, clad in suits much like her Zero Suit but of different colors. She hesitated only a moment when she saw them, but that moment encapsulated all her past months of self-doubt, everything that had defined her emotional state in the time since the BSL Station Incident, flew through her mind again, and for that instant, she was paralyzed. But a long life of training against the ills of hesitation spurred her back into action, for the women, whoever they were or whatever their existence meant for her, were in trouble.

The host of the rendezvous had begun filling their containment tanks with noxious gas of a kind that would kill them more slowly than some poisonous gases, but kill them more definitely, voiding all hope of resuscitation. It was hard for him to simply dispose of his two promotional clones like that, but now that he knew how to raise them, it would be the work of a few more months to create more, and to create better clones, more suited for actual sale. It was more important to cover his tracks and slay the two of them.

Samus dashed towards the tanks where the two women now were both struggling to breathe, doubled up on the floor as they coughed and choked in the toxic air. Samus fired two normal missiles at the tanks in rapid succession, deciding quickly that immediate return to the breathable air of the ship was more important than the potential damage from shrapnel, and the two women were quickly freed. Their breathing stabilized, and they had apparently avoided any significant injury from the shattered plastiglass of the tanks.

Samus' eyes darted between the two women, the hesitation rushing back to her, now certain of who these women were. She was caught in a mix of emotions, rage, confusion, and curiosity.

The clones were easier to read: animal fear registered in their gazes, fight-or-flight adrenaline coursing through their systems. Both chose flight, leaping with great agility over the shattered edges of the tanks, then dashing into different escape passages.

"Wait!" Samus shouted, extending an armored hand after the fleeing women. Without hesitation, she dashed after the red-suited woman, zipping down a narrow corridor with her thermal visor equipped, seeking the body heat of the other woman where the darkness and cacophony of noise failed to yield her location. Suddenly she heard a clang, and saw a bright flash of heat. She dashed ahead, finding at last a door that had been superheated, but was now rapidly cooling; a hatch for an escape pod.

"Adam!" she shouted, calling up her transmitter in hopes that he was tracking the escape pods. She was greeted by a squeal of static. Right, no radio signals.

The whole ship shuttered, life suddenly coming into its engines. She had to leave, or be taken with the N'Kren's ship to anywhere in the galaxy. She turned about, leaving the way she had come.

The ship was definitely going somewhere by the time she returned to her gunship in the docking bay, but she had been saved by the fact that it could not open a subspace field in the pulsar's range. Still she hastily leapt into her ship, Adam having everything ready to jump as soon as the hatch was closed.

"Did you see anything?" she asked. A futile question, and one she already knew the answer to.

"I could not make visual confirmation of anything going on from the ship's vantage point in the docking bay," Adam replied. "What happened?"

"We have to find the women who were on this ship," she said.

**Author's Note: Yup, took way too long for me to do this. Combination of my other story (which if you happen to be a fan of Yoruichi x Soi Fon in Bleach, you should check out) and me going back to an overstuffed college schedule. Might be a while before another chapter appears…**


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